Delhi woman shot thrice at bus stand, opposite police post

New Delhi: Just across the road from a police post, a woman waiting in South Delhi for a bus was shot dead, allegedly by a drunk man. Three bullets hit her in her face and head. Witnesses who grabbed the man, who shot 25-year-old Pooja, say she was harassed for several minutes by him before he opened fire, but the police did not intervene.

"I was waiting for someone. These two people were having an argument for quite some time. I heard a gunshot and when I turned, the girl was on the ground and screaming. We caught one of them right there," said Rakesh Kumar.

The incident underscored that despite many assurances, the national capital remains as unsafe as it was two months ago, when a medical student was gang-raped and tortured by six men on a moving bus, also on a Sunday evening.

Eyewitnesses say at about 8 pm yesterday, the woman, Pooja, her husband and her friend, Kiran, were accosted by two men on a motorcycle; the police say the men were known to her. According to the police, one of the men was trying to force the victim's friend, Kiran, to leave with him on the motorcycle and when Pooja intervened, he allegedly pulled out a gun and shot her in the face and head. She was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), but died on the way.

The police claims it moved in swiftly to nab one of the accused, a man named Munshi Yadav. But eyewitnesses say it was people around who caught him and handed him to the traffic police. A country-made gun and bullets were recovered from him. The other man escaped. The police have alleged that both men were drunk.

Police control room vans or PCRs were reportedly stationed only some distance away. There is an alert in the Capital after the Hyderabad blasts on Thursday and there is heavy police patrolling in areas like the bus depot.